


A River in Egypt

by raumolirien



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumolirien/pseuds/raumolirien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When you called saying that you needed assistance with an ‘emergency rescue mission,’ this is not what I had in mind.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A River in Egypt

“River, no. No, no, this is a very bad, extremely very not good idea!”

He stalked around the TARDIS console in a vain attempt to change the coordinates for the fifth time, but she blocked his movements with practised ease, paying him no mind as she rolled her eyes and an amused smile ghosted her lips.

“You’re just upset that I suggested something more exciting than Disneyland Clom, sweetie.”

“When you called saying that you needed assistance with an ‘emergency rescue mission,’ this is not what I had in mind.”

He had begun pacing and, though he was making a magnificent effort to hide it, his clenched jaw and worried eyes gave away his increasingly tangible nervousness. River eyed him carefully, more than a little confused as to why he was behaving so strangely. His quirks she could handle, but she’d never seen him so distraught over such a comparatively safe adventure, and his uneasiness was starting to rub off on her.

“I thought you would have found it a noble act of historical preservation.”

“Yes, well. Let’s go preserve history elsewhere.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him with one finely arched brow. “What have you got against ancient Alexandria, Doctor?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all. Lovely place. Cleopatra IV’s a great friend—bit of a pushover, though; you were quite right—”

“Julius Caesar’s about to pull some idiotic stunt and burn down the greatest library in Earth’s history, and you don’t want to help me save even a fraction of its contents?”

The Doctor cringed at her words, their frustrated and slightly hurt tone clenching his hearts and increasing the sharp pain of the memories that always drifted on the outskirts of his mind. He lowered his head and clenched his hands into fists, his hair falling over his eyes as he struggled with the emotion this still young River could not yet see.

“I hate libraries, River.”

“You like the TARDIS library well enough.” She uncrossed her arms and placed her hands on her hips, a patronising smirk lifting the corners of her mouth. “And I’ll be with you, my love. If you get scared, I’ll let you hold my hand. Doesn’t that make it better?”

“No.” He looked up slightly, gaze unfocused, and put on his best petulant voice to hide his building panic. “You and libraries are even worse. In fact, if you never went to another library ever again, it would be too soon.”

“There goes my career, then.” Something in his eyes unnerved her, but she shook off the feeling and her smirk widened instead. “Libraries are a bit of a necessity.”

“Good. Archaeology is rubbish, anyway.”

She let out an exasperated sigh and her lips dipped into an angry frown, having finally had enough of his irrational obstinacy. “Doctor, I am going in there and saving at the very least a handful of those scrolls whether you like it or not. We’ve got twenty minutes before this whole place goes up in flames; you can come if you like, but don’t think for _one second_ that—”

“River…”

She stopped abruptly at the ache in his voice, and her annoyance disappeared completely when she saw the telltale sheen of tears in his eyes. She closed the space between them, tirade forgotten, and placed one hand on his tweed-clad shoulder, the other against his cheek, caressing the smooth skin tenderly. “Oh, sweetie… whatever it is—whatever happened—you’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. I’m here. There’s nothing in this library we can’t handle. You and me, running for our lives. Just another adventure.” Her eyes blazed with a fiercely protective spark, and he couldn’t stop his slow smile from growing, even as his hearts stumbled and twisted within his chest. He nodded and wrapped his arms around her, her forehead nestled against his neck and his hands in her hair. They stood that way for a long moment, taking and giving comfort in the circle of their embrace, neither yet willing to let go. When she felt the tension begin to drain from his frame, she pulled her head back and gazed at him with a small smile. “Are we good?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded again, trying to rid himself of the sense of dread that had returned to creep up his spine and raise the hairs on the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he whispered, taking one of her hands in his and giving it a reassuring squeeze, more for his own benefit than for hers. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“Good.” She clutched his hand tighter, leading him toward the TARDIS doors with a mischievous grin. She grabbed a black bag off the coat tree and turned quickly to face him, eyes gleaming. “Let’s save some history.”

As he watched her steal into what was perhaps the most important library planet Earth had ever known, the Doctor, despite his fears and foreknowledge and unbearable pain, did not try to contain the smile that at long last bloomed across his face. She was alive. She was here and she was alive, and he knew—oh, he knew; he would follow her anywhere.

He straightened his bowtie and took a deep steadying breath, tucking his sonic securely into one of his inside pockets. He pulled a torch from another pocket and, closing the door firmly behind him, the Doctor answered his wife’s call and walked headlong into a library full of shadows.

Again.

\- X -

“It’s smaller than I remember it.”

He’d caught up to her quickly enough; she hadn’t gotten very far before she’d started browsing the shelves, delicately choosing scrolls and placing them into the bag hanging off her shoulder. “How many times have you been here, Doctor?”

“I’ve lost count.” The lit torches flickered in their sconces, and the firelight made her curls glow more ginger than gold. He swallowed, shining his own torch on the text she was reading. “Used to come here a lot, actually. I helped write some of these scrolls.”

“Really? What on? There aren’t documents in here on how to rove aimlessly about the universe, surely.”

“That’s not all I’m good for, thank you very much.” He bopped her on the nose and ignored her smirk. “I wrote one on the proper conduct for prayer meetings, one on how to efficiently wrap a mummy, one on the most effective methods for dealing with rogue Osirians, _three_ on the medicinal properties of cannabis—”

“Hippie!” She shouted over her shoulder and grinned affectionately, interrupting what was undoubtedly bound to be a ridiculously long list.

“Archaeologist,” he countered, smiling widely at her exclamation and stepping in closer to read over her shoulder. “And you’re one to talk, Miss Hallucinogenic Lipstick. Er… you do have that by now, don’t you? Spoilers?” He mentally scolded himself for his carelessness, but River merely laughed and turned to face him, kissing the corner of his mouth softly.

“Acquired it just last month.”

“And how exactly did you acquire it?” He walked beside her as she moved swiftly and silently to another shelf several rows over, scrubbing frantically at the spot she’d kissed. His eyes never left her smile, the width of which clearly indicated that the 'acquiring' had been anything but legal.

“Spoilers, sweetie. And I’m not wearing it now, so you can stop rubbing your face raw.” River carefully took a scroll from the middle of a stack, read the first few lines, and the Doctor blanched as he watched the expression in her eyes turn absolutely wicked. “Oh, my. Now what have we here…” She trailed off as she continued reading, her eyes widening and her earlier flirtatious smirk returning with a vengeance. “Would you like to see this, Doctor? It might shock you.”

“I can handle anything, River Song.”

“Is that a challenge, my love?” She’d sidled closer and, before he knew it, she was pressed against him, the scroll held securely behind her back. He smiled and leaned into her, just barely grazing her lips with his own as he made what he must have thought was a rather clever and surreptitious swipe for the scroll. She laughed and immediately pulled back. “No, no, Doctor. This one is most definitely mine.”

“Just let me see it!” he whined. “River, come on. Please?”

In answer she tucked the scroll under her arm and readjusted her bag, walking away from him and deeper into the library. She made a show of checking the watch she’d pulled out of her pocket as she called to him. “We’ve still got some time left. Coming, sweetie?”

“Yes, dear,” he mumbled, shuffling toward her and deliberately kicking up as much wayward sand as he could, his torch dangling loosely by his knee. He watched her vigilantly as he approached, looking for his chance, and when she shifted slightly to draw another scroll from the shelves, he lunged and grabbed the offending one deftly from the crook of her elbow. He practically skipped away, holding the scroll triumphantly in his unoccupied hand, smiling giddily as he unrolled it with a flourish, River staring at him open-mouthed, before it morphed into yet another fairly suggestive smirk. “Oh…”

“Yes.”

“Oh!”

“You’re on that quite a few times. Someone has certainly been a busy boy.”

“I most certainly have not!” he retorted, a beam of light flailing with his arms in protest, his slightly scandalised expression belying his refusal.

“It’s a river in Egypt, sweetie,” she said, chuckling to herself as she stuffed even more scrolls into her bag, which suspiciously never seemed to get any closer to becoming full.

“What is?” the Doctor snapped, missing the trap entirely in his attempt to regain some dignity.

“Denial.”

“Isn’t that joke in bad taste, considering where we are?”

“I thought it was in perfectly good taste, considering where we are.” She smiled at his childish huff, and she patted him indulgently on his forearm, snatching the scroll back in the process and placing it safely in the bag. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, of course,” she smiled.

“River.”

“Being on a list of Cleopatra’s lovers, that is.”

“ _River._ ”

“Five times.” “Oi! I’ll have you know, all of those were in my last regeneration. And that third one was a ploy; a-a-a political maneuver on her part and a frivolous whim on mine. Nothing happened. I swear!”

Her laughter echoed loudly in the dim library, and she had to brace herself against a shelf for fear of doubling over. “Oh, my love,” the affection in her voice stilled his wild gesturing. “You don’t need to give me any excuses. I know. I may not have for a while at the very beginning… but _I know_. Even if it’s still early days for us. For me.”

He relaxed and leant beside her against the shelf. “My last face… he… got around a bit.” He fidgeted sheepishly and drew circles on the ground with the light from his torch. She brushed a hand over his bowtie, then down over his chest.

“Mmmm, and will I ever meet this insatiable tenth body?”

He again shoved his heartbreak into the darkest recesses of his mind and hearts, smiling at her instead and brushing the side of her nose. “Spoilers.”

River sighed and returned his smile, dragging a finger along his brace. “Of course spoilers.”

“You don’t want to meet him, anyway,” he continued airily, running a hand through her hair, his fingers tangling in unruly curls. “You’d miss me too much.”

“Oh, Doctor,” her smile brightened and she leaned into his touch. “I love you. No matter the face. You know that.”

He nodded, quietly agreeing with her, and they stood in companionable silence for a few minutes—River skimming more scrolls before placing them in her bag with the rest, The Doctor playing with an errant curl behind her ear. The almost imperceptible smell of smoke wafted through the air and he sniffed loudly, his content grin dimming as he looked over River’s shoulder. “River…”

“Yes?”

He pointed as the crackle and glow of flames rose far off on the opposite side of the library, a grey haze already starting to spread. “It seems we’ve overstayed our welcome.” She glanced in the direction he indicated, and shook her head.

“So we have. Are you sure we can’t save it? The TARDIS could put out the fire easily enough—” He gave her a warning glare. “I know, I know; no rewriting history that could change the entire course of human existence. Fine.” She coughed, indiscriminately grabbing scrolls and shoving them as softly as possible into the bag as they moved away from the slowly encroaching flames. “You know, I’m almost surprised this wasn’t actually your fault. I half expected you to trip and drop a torch.”

“Oi!”

“Such a pity. I was looking forward to discovering more of your... _interesting_ traces in this library. We’ll have to come back sometime. How does a hundred years ago sound?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but the sudden roar of new flames from behind him gave him pause, and he spun in place to observe the near-towering inferno. “Lighting both ends? If anything, Caesar was determined, wasn’t he?”

“How should I know? I haven’t met the man.”

“No?” The Doctor grinned and clapped his hands. “Well, we’ll save that for another day. Now, then; we have fire closing in on both sides with the TARDIS in the middle. What shall we do, Dr. Song?”

She smiled broadly and secured her bag over her shoulder, the rising heat adding a flush to her cheeks. “Run?”

The Doctor met River’s gaze, her eyes sparkling eagerly in the flickering orange light, her exhilarated expression mirroring his own. He took her hand and kissed it lightly, lacing his fingers with hers.

“Always.”


End file.
